This is Ted Leonsis. He is the owner of a professional hoc-key (sp?) team and a Greek, two solid giveaways that you should never pay credence to anything that slinks out of his fat tabbouleh hole. Yet here we are getting pissy about some obtuse nonsense he spouted on his blog. Such is the gaping void of suck that is the NFL offseason.

The team he owns is the Washington Capitals, a franchise that had no fans prior to having the NHL’s MVP on its roster and will have none once again after it endures another losing season. (RAWK THE RED!) Ted also helped spur AOL to financial success (when it had success and lots of discs to mail you), bankrolls movies and blog networks and other entrepreneurial shit. This makes him a Winner in the Game of Life.

Beyond that, Leonsis is a Pronouncer of Epochs. Only he, as an elite flier, can bookmark the partitions between the great shifts in cultural thinking. I hope you have enjoyed The Era of Snarky Feelings because Ted, in a premise he was daring enough to steal from David Denby, has pronounced snark to be dead. Kaput. Subject to necrobestiality fetishists.

Snark is dead. The era of snideness and rudeness is over. I am calling the bottom.

Ovechkin only likes being a top anyway.

Incidentally, if, like me, you happen to be a glutton for punishment and listened to Simmons podcast with Rick Reilly, you heard Simmons invoke 9/11 as a time when he thought we would forever become a kinder and more sincere people. If I wasn’t so snark-ravin’ mad (feel free to use, Reilly) I’d transcribe the whole thing to 9-11 Happened to Me!, a wonderful site “devoted to compiling the most inane, alarmist, reactionary and Irony Is Dead comments everyone said — and I mean everyone — in the days after September 11.”

Here is how I see it. Can you name me one business based on snarkiness that has been successful? Can you name me one person that you know that is snarky and rude that is happy? Has great relationships? Has life success? Can you name me one blogger that is relentless in his snideness that is successful with readers and advertisers? How about one anonymous negative message board poster that is self actualized; takes initiative; and is a winner? I know why. It is because snark is so 2004, so pre the new reality.

Let’s see – there’s damn near everyone in the entertainment world interested in being funny. They’ve garnered some financial and personal success from this whole snark thing. The Gawker business model seems to have netted Nick Denton a few shiny dimes from his sweat-snark shop, while many of the individual bloggers are living comfortably doing what they do. Granted, it’s not Nanking financier money, but it’s livable nonetheless.

The era of Snark is over. It was all tangled up in an era of empty financial success calories where you were either in or out with the mainstream media and it was easy to be snarky sort of like a comedian that drops F bombs and curse words in a stand-up act to be considered hip and funny. Snark is for the intellectually lazy.

So it was snark that sunk Wall Street? At least that’s what you seem to be implying. And here I thought it was self-serious asshole millionaires who did it. Why search out CEO homes when we could be lynching Louis C.K.?

As for the statement that sarcasm is for the intellectually lazy, sure, there’s some truth to that. But it’s certainly no less lazy and naive than some Greg Kinnear in Little Miss Sunshine-esque rant about behaviors that aren’t indicative of “winners”.

It is hard to find the upside in downside thinking and activity, isn’t it?

Quite the linguistic flourish.

Snark, the animal species in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark are not positive role models. Snark is dead. Bury it and move on. We are all in this together. Onward.

Similarly, a douche, a device used in vaginal irrigation, is not a positive role model either.

And, sure, we will all hold an earnest funereal ceremony (pyre or Viking funeral – TBD) for snark and irony and dick jokes, where we will forever put away childish things and set out into the world, renewed with purpose and enterprise and with jagged sticks jammed 18 inches into our rectums. Then we will be Winners. And having won, we’ll look for some other benign slice of humanity to decry.

i’m struggling to understand how this relates to football, necrobeastiality, boobs, or dick jokes.

04.08.09 at 2:14 pm

Boss Godfrey

No one who lucked into an AOL fortune should be taken seriously at anything.

You should read about the AOL/Time Warner meeting where the heads of all the other divisions (HBO, Warner Bros., etc) finally got fed up and told their “boss” Steve Case that he didn’t have any fucking clothes on.

04.08.09 at 2:16 pm

Otto Man

CM, I respect your proactive approach to a bold new paradigm, but I think I have to stick with snark.

04.08.09 at 2:22 pm

G.G.

Bill Hicks thinks this guy…may be on to something?

[/r.i.p bill]

04.08.09 at 2:23 pm

Grimey

Also dead? That thing on top of Ted’s head

04.08.09 at 2:33 pm

Otto Man

Nah, I think that’s his real hair. But whether the carpet matches the drapes, only Ovechkin can say for sure.

04.08.09 at 2:38 pm

Needs More Cheerleaders

I think snark means ‘gay anal’ in greek.

04.08.09 at 2:40 pm

spanky datass

Snark dead!?! Someone tell Cowherd he’s gotta find a new schtick.

/never knows if its ‘schtick’ or shtick’

04.08.09 at 2:46 pm

spanky datass

NMC+1 So if snark means ‘gay anal’ and it is dead, what have we learned from our nasty tourney bracket?

04.08.09 at 2:49 pm

Blaytor

Rick Reilly defines the term smug fuckwitted cockguzzler. Simmons is, comparatively, a paragon of virtue and enlightenment. Only conmparatively though.

04.08.09 at 2:50 pm

Jewbacca

I thought Rule 4080 was that record company people were shady. What does that have to do with snark?

Was that just snark?

04.08.09 at 2:52 pm

Jewbacca

And i apologize Cock Flashy as you made the same joke in a more timely fashion.

04.08.09 at 3:14 pm

futuremrsrickankiel

THIS… IS… SPARTA!!!

04.08.09 at 3:26 pm

Tim the Enchanter

Clearly this Pollyanna-esque doofus has never heard of a touchy, arrogant little clown named Jon “Stewart” Liebovitz or his associated name-dropping cronies. Good call on the entire entertainment industry, Ape.

04.08.09 at 3:26 pm

Mo Charlo

Maybe snarkiness will get some channel other than VS. to show his shitty sport.

04.08.09 at 3:26 pm

Cleetus

dick jokes are the 21st century version of snark.

NO ONE DENIES THIS!

04.08.09 at 3:29 pm

Westbrook Is My Anti-Drug

I think Mr. Leonisis is just bitter that his arena was half-full of those snarky assholes known as Flyers’ fans during last year’s playoffs.

04.08.09 at 3:30 pm

Westbrook Is My Anti-Drug

Just to say, as a Flyers’ fan myself, I wear the badge of snarky asshole with pride.

04.08.09 at 3:49 pm

LaFavre's Next Retirement

What has this guy got against sharks anyway? Just stay out of the water.

04.08.09 at 4:11 pm

Gino Tourettsa

I’m sure he loves Snorks. Snorks aren’t snarks.

04.08.09 at 5:59 pm

Hey retard

Tabbouleh is an Arabic dish, not a Greek one.

04.08.09 at 6:03 pm

Slash

Who asked this suppurating pustule whether or not he liked “snark”?

Remind me, how did that “irony is dead after 9/11″ thing go?

You know how you know that something is going to be around for awhile longer? When an old rich guy proclaims it “over.” Fuck you, Ted, and your shitty, crooked hair.

04.08.09 at 6:39 pm

EastEndClam

Ted, your hair sucks.

04.08.09 at 7:06 pm

EastEndClam

TtE: … a touchy, arrogant little clown named Jon “Stewart” Liebovitz.

I dunno, I made the mistake of clicking on the link to the night he came back on, again, years later. Antithesis of touchy little arrogant clown. Then again, I’m from around there and it still wounds deep. I still say Teds’ hair sucks. As well as Plax.

This post actually influenced me to eat a Greek gyro and tabouli of unknown national/ethnic origin for lunch today.

04.08.09 at 8:09 pm

Gino Tourettsa

Oh yeah, all of Cyprus should go to the Greeks.

04.08.09 at 8:10 pm

dibbly

/recipe’d

04.08.09 at 8:16 pm

dibbly

also – seriously dissing Jon Stewart? could this be the beginning of a cocefaneflawa?

(comedy central fake news flame war)

04.08.09 at 9:43 pm

Bizz Busserson

His ideas intrigue me. I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.

04.09.09 at 11:49 am

Zeus

Used to work at AOL. Ted would get up in front of all-hands meetings and talk about how he flew in on his private plane, drove his new Ferrari, and how we all needed to work smarter. An amazing tool.

04.09.09 at 12:01 pm

Nate

Snark and sarcasm have been around for way too long a time for them to be “dead.” They are a part of the way humans think and act. This stupid dude is essentially “I declare that [insert emotion and/or behavior] will soon be over.” Just fucking dumb.

04.09.09 at 2:01 pm

Harrison

This post was lame. Nobody cares about your petty bullshit blog wars. Write something worth talking about than a suit whose life you’d gladly have. I have no dick.

04.09.09 at 7:49 pm

JazzaJack

Not sure why we even listen to this guy … he formed a company but didn’t think through a viable growth strategy and got blindsided when broadband availability increased. He duped a bunch of investors into blessing a “merger” with Time Warner that had no — ZERO — chance of success. He made a boatload of dough personally and destroyed a lot of value for others in the process. For this he gets to pass judgment and share opinions? NOT!

04.10.09 at 7:47 am

Some Dude

Leonsis is a douchey fucktard. And I say this not only as a Penguins fan, but as an old AOL user and a hater of douchey fucktards.

Go stuff your face with more food, Sweaty Teddy.

04.10.09 at 7:34 pm

James Harrison will taste manflesh!

-Captain Murphy (+1)

-As someone who was snarky before it was a word, I find this “article” rather amusing.

-This guy fell ass-backward into some serious money with the Time merger, then fell ass-backward into a draft lottery he couldn’t lose (No Ovechkin? He would’ve been stuck with Evgeni Malkin, the poor bastard.) So because he’s phenomenally lucky, he gets to tell people with actual talent how to write? If he says so.

-P.S. Irony did die in 2001, because after that everyone started calling it “snark”. You CAN kill a word, but apparently you can’t kill off all the assholes.